SOCIAL MEDIA MISREPRESENTATION AND MISINFORMATION OF CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC IN NIGERIA

Abstract

In this globalization era, social media is a powerful tool of propaganda and an invaluable system of disseminating information. It acts as a double edged sword thus; citizens received information without any hitch and it is also used to misinform people through circulation of unverified information together with misrepresentation of ideas. In lieu of this development, the question now becomes: to what extent do misinformation and misrepresentation on social media harm and create exceptional fear on the general public about covid-19 pandemic? This is a qualitative study which explored social media outlets such as Facebook: Whatsapp, Online Newspapers and Blogs where the thesis about the pandemic are well spelt out with consideration that they are the major forum used by many except World Health Organization (WHO) and the likes. Message from these forums have been randomly selected for analysis in this work. The researcher discovers that there are so many misinformation and misrepresentation of ideas in social media which majority of people / populace took very dearly because of the class of people involved and was quoted to have said it or/and posted them, therefore draw conclusion that it caused more harm on the citizenry than the pandemic itself. The World Health Organization (WHO) cautions that the proliferation of misinformation on social network sites might become deadlier than the virus itself (WHO 2020).